Today’s payments landscape has become very complex as the demands of consumers have changed, security measures have become more rigorous, and technology has continued to evolve quickly. These challenges make navigating the payments industry difficult for everyone involved in the payments industry, including merchants. This is especially true for businesses that operate in a “non-traditional” way. Businesses that aren’t based in the standard brick and mortar store front or just sell a unique product or service often have a more difficult time finding the payment processing solution that will help them be successful. But payment processing providers have plenty of space and opportunity to try to create and distribute these solutions. And they should.
Talk to Them
If you have a payments solution that could specifically benefit certain merchants like farmers markets or food trucks, you should market to them. Your messaging and imagery should reassure these merchants that your products and services will help make their lives easier and explain how.
Listen to Them
You can’t acquire merchants if you don’t even know what their needs and wants are. Your company should be at least learning about less traditional merchants and trying to find solutions that could best help their business.
Embrace the Challenges
Chances are, as you start developing solutions that can accommodate merchants building even the most unique businesses, you’ll encounter many difficult challenges. These challenges should be viewed as opportunities to differentiate in the payments industry and to learn even more.
Think Outside the Store
Our increasingly mobile society is encouraging businesses to take their operations outside of the building. Although payments players have already begun providing easy to use and convenient mobile options for accepting payments, there is plenty of room to continue innovating.
Integrations Matter
Today’s payment processing providers have already proven that integrating reporting, marketing, and other management tools into payment software and POS systems. The non-traditional merchants continue to seek out robust tools for running their businesses, providers should ensure that the unique needs of non-traditional merchants are being considered when developing these multi-faceted solutions.
Try New Things
If you’re interested in creating payment processing solutions that can work for unique businesses, you must be willing to try new things. By no means should you completely recreate your company and ditch all of the solutions that are already working for your merchants. But, you should consider finding out how you could really provide value to merchants who might not be being served right now and develop solutions that no other provider has been successful at.